Sunday, September 27, 2009

This is a photo of Edmund H. Garrett of Boston Mass.(1853-1929) It was probably taken in the 1890's. He completed at least 83 bookplates during his lifetime. Fifty Seven of them are in a 1904 checklist which I have copied from The Bookplates of Edmund H. Garrett written in 1904 by William Howe Downes. Dr. William E. Butler has in his collection about 26 additional Garrett plates not listed below . I will try to get a list of those names for future publication. Most of the items I chose to scan are pictorial because of my own bias. He also did many armorial plates.

Click On Image To Enlarge

A growing number of institutions are digitizing their bookplate collections. Here is an one from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Edwin Davis French (1851-1906) working alone in his studio engraved over 200 bookplates that we know of. From time to time he collaborated with other artists and those bookplates were often quite different in appearance from his traditional armorial plates. Here are some examples.:

The Authors Club bookplate was designed by George Wharton Edwards in 1897.

This bookplate for William Henry and Katherine French Burnham was designed by E.D. French and engraved by James Webb.It is not mentioned in Edwin Davis French, A Memorial by Mary Brainerd French so it is , for the moment a puzzle.

In 1906 The Cosmos Club, which incidentally is still active asked one of their members

William Fuller Curtis to design a bookplate.

The Charles L. Dana plate was designed in 1898 by A. Kay Wormath

Mabel Carleton Gage designed this plate in 1902.

This Harvard plate was designed by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue in 1901

This plate designed in 1896 by Edmund H. Garrett is quite rare.

The Players plate was designed in 1894 by Howard Pyle.The image shown above is a photogravure reduction three inches high, retouched with graver by Mr. French but without his signature.

The James Edmund Scripps plate was designed by Albert Kahn in 1896

9/21/2009 David W. Lowden sent me the following information :

" I was intrigued by the Albert Kahn designed plate pictured in the E. D. French writeup. As you may know, Kahn was a noted Detroit architect (he founded his firm in 1895, one year before the plate). His early designs were in the Arts & Crafts style; his later (more famous) work was in industrial design (especially for the auto companies). He was the architect for George Booth's Cranbrook House (1908), were he and his wife (Ellen Scripps) lived. Ellen was the daugher of James Edmund (your bookplate owner). Booth was also the founder of the Cranbrook Press"

The Herman Simon plate was designed in 1904 by Mr. French's son -in -law Tom Tryon

Designed by Thomas Tryon for the library on board Mr. M. C. D. Borden's Yacht Sovereign. The owner objecting to the" Crown," Mr, Tryon designed a second plate, slightly differing in some details, and in which an Eagle was substituted for the Crown. The first, or " Crown," plate exists only in proof state, and is one of the rarest of the plates engraved by E.D.. French. During the Spanish American war, the yacht Sovereign was purchased by the United States Government and renamed the Scorpion

Designed in 1904 by Pierre de Chaignon La Rose a member of the English department at Harvard University.

E. B. Bird designed the plate for Charles H. Taylor Jr. in 1896

This is one of my favorites of the collaborations . It was designed by Howard Pyle.

Wallace Reid was a silent movie star who designed his own bookplate. Four of the five celebrity bookplates in this posting were designed by their owner's. The one exception is Paulette Goddard whose husband (at the time) Charlie Chaplin designed her bookplate.

Here are a few more bookplates with maps to add to last weeks posting.

William Emil Belanske was a watercolor artist and curator for the William K. Vanderbilt II collection.

The Sanford Bookplate has a rubber stamp mark from the recently closed Acres of Books in California.

One last thing: If you decided not to bid on the Paul Klee Bookplate you may still be interested in some of the bookplates I have listed on Ebay.

Bookplates with maps and globes in their design are of great interest to me so Gordon's plate is a welcome addition to my collection. In 1940 Maude Earle Wesby wrote a book about this collecting theme.It is Bookplates with Globes or Maps in Design . All the bookplates that follow can be enlarged by clicking on an image. In some instances I know something about the owner or artist and have included the information. Others have been left blank. If you have some knowledge to share please send it to Bookplatemaven@hotmail.com

These two plates were engraved by Sidney Lawton Smith. On John Farwell's plate the reproduction of Ortelius's map of 1570 expresses his interest in early American cartography.

If you love ephemera The American Antiquarian Society deserves your support.